Take This Post With A Grain of Salt

Salt? You might be thinking. What's so special about salt? Salt is salt, right? It's not, though! It seems to me that every time I go into my grocery store, the display of gourmet salts is bigger. There is an almost infinite palette of lovely earth tone colors- pinks, tans, beiges, reds, browns, greys... even black salt! It's very appealing. I wanted to know more.

That growing display in my grocery store is due to a new trend toward more sophisticated use of salts harvested from seas- or even fossilized seas, in the case of Himalayan Pink. Wait, did I say that this is a new trend? Well, it might be a growing trend right now, but these salts are nothing new. It's more like a return to ancient, historical artisan salts. Hand-raking sea salt? That's really old.

Artisan salts range in color due to their mineral content. The different minerals in salts provide nutrients as well as flavor, which ranges from mild, to smoky, to earthy, to sweet. Likewise, the crystals of gourmet salts develop differently, and this affects the flavor.

Here is how it was described in another great blog post I found on this subject, at saltnews.com: "Flake salts dissolve fast and completely, for brilliant flashes of pungent saltiness. The complex, irregular granular crystals of fleur de sel give a modulated and well-behaved saltiness. Larger crystals give explosive contrasts to food that change from one bite to the next, for intense layering of flavors in a single bite."

Due to their different flavor profiles, one artisan salt will go better with a certain food than another. You can easily find information on the web to describe which to use where. This blog post at Delicious Living describes Himalayan Pink, Black Lava, Fleur de Sel, and Smoked Salts.

One gourmet salt that I have used is Fleur de Sel, a salt harvested on the coast of France. It makes all the difference in Dorie Greenspan's "World Peace Cookies," one of my very favorite cookie recipes. I highly recommend her book "Baking, From My Home to Yours," where this recipe can be found. I'll link to the recipe on the web here at the Splendid Table. They. Are. So. Good. Looooove that salty/sweet combo. The salt really accentuates the chocolate.

P.S. Some lovely salts would be just the thing to fill a beautiful Crosby & Taylor salt pot, coming later this summer! Look at my post from June 10th to get a sneak peek at a salt pot and other new Pewter & Stoneware pieces. Artisan crafted salts in artisan crafted stoneware- fabulous! :)